I've tracked down some of the research articles that some of these claims are based on, but they all suffer from the usual issue of (the lack of) proper controls. When I see things like 'detoxify your body', my mind screams 'pseudoscience!!' .Still, it was interesting, and I thought I'd try it out.

The popular suggestion is to try it for 30 days, as it will take time to see some of the benefits. I live in NH, and even now (in summer) the cold water is really cold, so I was a little hesitant to give it a go. Still, I love a challenge.

I started out last Saturday. I've been good about it so far. After the first couple of days, I've not had to talk myself into doing it. I'm beginning to like it a bit, to be honest.

As to the benefits: I have yet to see any major differences in anything. Still, some advantages are incontrovertible.

1) It saves water - I doubt anyone is going to take long, leisurely cold showers (especially in the northern US).
2) It saves money - see above. Shorter showers = less water used. Cold showers = less need to heat water = money savings.
3) The shock does wake me up. However, I'm a morning person, so I'm already very awake at the time I take my shower. Still, it is a nice feeling.

At some point in the next month or so, the water here will become cold enough to give you hypothermia during a shower, so I'll stop at that point, but I think this will be a nice variation to try in the warm months, and I hope to finish the 30-day challenge.

Oy, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din. I think the farthest I can go is turning the water from hot to cold for the last 30 seconds or so of my shower. That's plenty shocking for me. And I'm very skeptical of any claim of detoxification benefits, although I had patients in the past with neurovascular disorders who claimed benefits from sessions of alternating hot/cold water soaks of feet or hands.

I'm not a scientist or doctor as John and you are, Yohann, but even I am skeptical about these so called benefits. My apartment has very little insulation and can get desperately hot during a heat wave. (Only my bedroom is air conditioned.) That is the only time I will take a cold bath or shower.

Like Yohann, I am a morning person so I don't need the shock value of a cold shower. Also, I tend to shower/bathe in the evening when I want to relax. Obviously, warm water will help me do that more than cold.

I could never take you up on this challenge. Like John, I do a cold blast at the end of my showers. I do that to insure pores are closed. But for the entire shower....no way. I wish you good luck and success in debunking those myths.

Yohann, you are a brave, man, my friend!
i have done it quite a few times and have alternated with hotsprings and a dip in the Pacific Ocean on a few occasions. i would do it more often if it were more convenient as i really enjoy it. i am not sure about the health benefits, but it surely shocks your immune system into action!
i guess all those Russian and northern Europeans and their polar swims must know something. It surely wakes you up!

i remember i tried to do this during the winter one year i think 2010 or 2011. did for about a month or two straight. definitely saved money and also reduced the amount of time i normally take in the shower.

I worked in a wilderness survival camp for a year, there was no hot water and I lived in the camp 24 hours a day, five days per week. In other words, I took cold showers almost every day for a year. I can't say that I saw any significant benefits from the experience, other than learning to dread taking a shower.

After I started cold water shaving last December, I started taking "cool" showers and eased myself into cold over the course of a month. I've come to really enjoy the briskness, especially at the end of a long day working outside in the Alabama heat. The downside is that my wife is now totally deterred from joining me in the shower after jumping in to surprise me one morning.

Been there, done that. I went to boarding school and we had to have a cold shower every morning year round, regardless of the temperature. We rose at 6.00am and our dormitory prefect ensured we were out of bed immediately and that each of us had a cold shower; it had to be full immersion, none of this just sticking head under to look as though you'd been in. In the evenings before supper we had to have a hot shower.

In the original James Bond novels, this was known as a "Scottish" shower. Ever since reading about them as a young adult I've been taking them in one form or another. That's morphed into keeping the cold just to the rinse cycle. Every now and then I skip the cold entirely. My frequency of getting colds while deep within the Scottish cycle was zero, but for the stretches of time I went back to hot then I started getting colds again. I can't prove a direct correlation, but it's at least an interesting coincidence.